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Zephyr
Origins Zephyr was a reprogrammed T-800 series machine serving under Tech-Comm in the years following 2030. It began its life somewhere around the year 2028 in a standard SkyNET factory and was designed and deployed as a standard field unit with standard equipment and no special programming or enabled read/write functionality. At the time it was encountered by Tech-Comm forces it had already endured some cosmetic damage as it had partaken in multiple assaults before that moment. Its fall into human hands occured during a failed SkyNET assault on an underground human bunker somewhere in the Los Angeles area. At the time, the reprogrammed unit Hyperion was also serving under human control and was given leave to work with the machine's programming, reconfiguring it and assigning it the designation of "Zephyr". How or why it was decided to bestow the name of the Greek minor deity "Zephyrus", spirit of the west wind and rejuvenation upon the machine has so far not been established. History & Characteristics In its early months of service with human forces, Zephyr was, as was usual for all repurposed SkyNET machines, looked at with a critical eye and doubt sturred in soldiers' minds as to the purpose and origins of the now no longer hostile unit. Eventually, through multiple heavy armed conflicts, the machine seemed to have earned at least some degree of trust with its human owners but whether that continued for any lenght of time remained to be seen. Perhaps the machine's most outstanding feature was its tendency to carry around a bulky Barrett M85 high-caliber anti-materiel rifle in a dedicated lock on its back. The rifle was granted as primary armament for the machine by one Tech-Comm commanding officer Shaw. The machine's curious ambition towards continuously relocating around human settlements for little apparent reasoning was on multiple occasions the reason for undue panic in patrolling and defending forces. However, as more soliers became accustomed to the machine's darker, more rustic looks and the glaring presence of a pipe-like object on its back, this became less of an issue as the machine's presence became increasingly welcome. Another of its defining traits was the fact that the machine would often carry around its neck or back, for its own or others' purposes, a small garment - a dirty shawl or rag. The machine was a favourite among some of humanity's younger members and was often seen comically sitting around with a child around its shoulders or standing outside defended walls conversing idly with youngsters. The machine was infamous for often scaring people into initial belief that it is a hostile drone due to the stark semblance to a weathered SkyNET machine and the fact that it rarely offered its human masters much warning through sound as once it found itself a place it considered appropriate within human structures, it would sit there sometimes for hours on end until some soldier would bump into it and fall into shock. It had darker glowing eyes due to a fierce combat scenario between it and a set of SkyNET infiltrating units which resulted in damage to its head's internal components, later addressed by Technical Specialist Bishop. The eyes contrasted against the dark-hued body considerably still, giving the machine an unique image to most of its SkyNET bretheren. Despite being armed with primarily long-range weaponry, the machine showed no tendency to avoid close-range and often, melee combat. The multiple occurances of hand-to-hand (or occasionally, claw) combat often left the machine's chassis damaged and quite visually displeasing. This warranted scrapping enemy units for self-repair purposes, leaving the initially original T-800 machine bearing resemblance to a Frankenstein-like construct, though it kept its symmetry and did not present much of a horrifying or unpleasant image other than being an obvious weapon of destruction. It often changed limbs and elements of itself, adding to its armor and physical potential. Most notable were the small shouder-guards and more solid chest, making it look more like a downgrade to a rustic T-888. The machine was, still, very much a T-800 with some modifications. Due to some issues with its initial behaviour and its perceptibility as a reprogrammed machine, command staff ordered one of its arms to be painted partially red. Its back, however would always seem to keep a splatter of dark green from previous attempts to change its coloration to be more easily identifiable. This, coupled with the fact that once the machine decided or was ordered to stick around human forces for long periods of time gave it the unique identifier that almost all reprogrammed machines were associated with during the main period of the conflict. Being a T-800 machine left Zephyr with limited survivability in prolonged engagements against SkyNET units. This pushed command staff to eventually order the machine's read/write capabilities to be enabled, allowing the unit a wide and changeable array of tactics and perceptibility of its surroundings as well as easier human contact. It steadily, but slowly developed its own character-of-sorts but was never really known for going full human mentality. It developed its own understandings of human concepts and was often seen conversing with humans on a relatively high level on different subjects. The machine's tendency to either be fully engaged in human conduct or completey separated from human forces, often for weeks, however left many with a strange taste in their mouths and the machine never caught on with some of its human companions. In order to make contact with a walking piece of weaponized metal easier, force commander Aiko ordered the machine to analyse a resident soldier's vocal patterns and create a voice of its own to mitigate the effects of communciating with what was essentially a flat-voiced toaster with upgrades. This caught on but was eventually defaulted back to the machine's usual flat-line comms as an off occurance of its behaviour pushed the Tech-Comm technical staff to wipe some of its CPU due to several incidents pertaining to reprogrammed drones. This was a notable time of the machine's functioning period as there were several occasions on which Zephyr was a target of suspicion and mild distrust. During its second reprogramming, the machine's CPU would present vague references to modified code and some difficulty was had wiping its data centers. The core seemed to actively resist the wipe, in a matter of speaking, before surprisingly assisting in the wipe, causing some damage to the equpiment that was being used to conduct the procedure. Some of these occurences left the staff with questions at the back of their heads as the machine would occasionally exhibit odd and unusual behaviour but most attributed this to the new-found awareness the machine acquired when it was given a "free will". Circumstantially, no reports were publically announced to have been made against the machine's functionality. Zephyr was, for all intents and purposes, just as puzzled with many topics of human life as was any other reprogrammed machine. While it had the look of death in its eye as any SkyNET machine would be proud to sport, it was no more than what is essentially a child with an instinct for killing. The machine was often confused and required clarification. It slowly grew into understanding the basic emotions and principles behind humanity but was, in the end, very far from being human. The sight of one officer Sakamoto carrying a small human child in his hands set off an inexplicable curiosity in Zephyr, a strange note, considering the vast amounts of information T-800 units naturally come with. Despite it being restricted in its existance as an intelligent tool, it showed interest and was often found doing things a human would find relaxing. Staring at the moon for hours without moving while humans slept or idling by a shallow river bed with no apparent cause seemed to confuse many people, though most just disregarded it is as "something it does because it has to do something". To be continued. Category:Characters Category:Reprogrammed Drones